Saturday, May 02, 2009

Carol Ann Duffy – a muse with a mission

The news that David Cameron intends to take part in a ‘Gay Pride’ march came hard on the heels of the news that after the appointment of the first female poet laureate - Carol Ann Duffy - it transpires that she is a lesbian (though this was doubtless common knowledge to everyone except His Grace) and now plans to use her status as Royal Poet to write a poem extolling ‘gay marriage’ or civil partnership.

Cranmer’s first reaction on hearing the news of Ms Duffy’s appointment was doubtless shared by many of His Grace’s readers and communicants: the next poet laureate was to be a woman – fine, long overdue. Notwithstanding that she believes headlines of The Sun to be poetry on a par with the genius of Shakespeare.

This women is a lesbian – oh well, what she does in her own spare time is her own business. Cranmer simply does not care.

This woman wants to write a poem extolling the virtues of civil partnership – ah, she has an agenda, like most homosexuals in high office, and the agenda is to proselytise the homosexual lifestyle.

The law was changed in the 1960's to decriminalise homosexual activity. At the time, male homosexuals were a persecuted minority (lesbian activity was not against the law). The New Statesman at the time argued that the effect would be one of happily-cohabiting homosexuals quietly and privately indulging in the antics of their exotic predeliction approximately 2.7 times a week.

On reflection, it may have been preferable to have adopted the 'Nelson' approach. With ‘gay rights’ now trumping religious conscience, a hornet’s nest has been stirred up and the buzzing is no longer benign.

Mr Ultramontane Grumpy Old Catholic has brought to Cranmer’s an interesting paper entitled ‘Learning from Homosexual Activism’ by John Deigham. It explains how Stonewall has infiltrated all walks of life, and its agenda has permeated all levels of society.

59 Comments:

The constructive, "what to do about it" part of Deigham's article is particularly good. He speaks to the issues very clearly and he is right on target. This needs much more publicity. There is no reason at all for people to thing that queers are correct and the Church is wrong. This is simply the result of the Church being entirely too timid and passive.

Timid and placid. The church(es) in particular, the public in general.

Any vacancy in Essex Police that is advertised in the print media is accompanied by the Stonewall logo. When I queried this (I know, it made me laugh too), I was more or less told to bugger off, and that it had nothing to do with me.

the catholic magazine Catholic Insight has expended $20K CAD so far in defending itself against a claims by a homosexual activist.

The complaint is made up of a series of brief quotations, without citation or context, which the complainant pulled from articles purportedly appearing on Catholic Insight's website.

15 months after the complaint was filed, the CI is still awaiting a ruling from the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Meanwhile the complainant has had all his legal fees paid for by the taxpayer.

In another case, Steve Boissoin, an Alberta pastor was hauled before a human rights commission for having written a letter to the editor in a local newspaper defending Christian teaching on homosexuality. Boissoin was ordered to apologize to the complainant in his case, to pay him a significant sum of money, and to never speak or write about homosexuality again.

In Parliament this year (24th March), the vote to keep free speech was lost by 328 votes to 174 in the House of Commons with the vote being whipped rather than a free vote. The clause was initially proposed by Lord Waddington, as part of last year’s Criminal Justice and Immigration Act, in an attempt to permit legitimate discussion of sexual practice. (See Christian concern for our nation report and information pack on http://www.ccfon.org/view.php?id=718 )Without it those wishing to express legitimate and biblical views about sexual practice could face frightening police investigation for an offence that may carry up to seven years in prison.

The homosexuals must be rubbing their hands with glee if mischievous complaints can elicit significant payouts.

The other point to note is that even if a complaint is subsequently adjudged to be unfounded, the uncertainty faced by the accused over many months will enusure that only the bravest will stick their neck above the parapet again.

For starters - the post at 18:46 is crude, vulgar, and offensive.Just because that's how queers are, is no reason for the rest of us to follow suit.

Next - another characteristic - they're aggressive. They always have been; and now they're liberated we can only expect more of the same. Used to be that if a someone at, say, an all-girls school, went home and told her parents about the strange, unfair, inappropriate behaviour of a teacher (female by definition), the parents could protect the child. If they recognized the activity as lesbian (favoritisim; victimization; harassment; making everybody run round in shared showers with no clothes on [and don't think they weren't verbal with it!], etc) the parents could object to other parents, the head and/or the school board. And the lezzos had to pull back - especially if a couple of them were co-habiting and well known for their proclivities.

Lesbians are horrible - and I say so because I've witnessed their behaviour as they tried to make converts. They go for young girls who, they think, are too innocent and unprotected to see, escape, and tell; or, alternatively, who might escape and work against them.Sometimes they assume that the young have already been damaged - as they themselves probably had been at the same age.

So now they're out in high office and parading about all over the media - and we can't protect our children anywhere in the public sphere.

A Lez for Poet/ess Laureate? What do you expect? I mean - given the Franco-German state of Letters and Filosofy? [It got a lot like this in Jacobean times, too - more euro hegemony...]

Except for Shakespeare, (or 'Beware the Cat'!), I don't read anything much written after 1400 - and yes, sometimes I skip bits there!

As for what they call poetry nowadays --- well, I don't see any. I took to walking out of readings, because they were pornography, and got slated for being rude...

Now Shakespeare could be less than saintly - but he did have substance, superlative skill, deep understanding of English Language, and wide General Knowledge. And he did provide decent people with some decent places to go: we don't have to follow the stench. To the pure, as it were, ...

The post-moderns and deconstructionists offer no such freedom. Like their Marxist other halves, they force conformity on all groundlings and students, whose faces they grind into the filth. Indeed, I suspect we could learn much by researching what proportion of said 'filosofers' and their master-models are male homosexuals, lesbians, or bi-sexuals.

I'm afraid that what we are witnessing is the fall of a decadent & decaying society, like many before, when hedonistic desire & self interest become the driving force & humanity turns its back on Gods laws the inevitable result is the (often) sudden fall of that society, sadly the righteous also suffer along with the guilty.In the last two decades we have seen the growth of militant homosexual groups, abortion viewed as a form of contraception, sex education in schools starting from primary age, morning after pills available without parental knowledge, widespread drug & alcohol abuse by the young, stabbings & shootings, a figurehead government that has betrayed the electorate & sold us out to European dictatorship without even a promised referendum, economic disaster, etc, etc, I'll let you fill in your own blanks about Christian free speech erosion etc.The fact is, we are ripe for disaster, what form it will take I do not know, I'm really just trying to give a warning, if you are undecided about trusting the God who has spent time writing to warn you of this time , the God, who became man & died to save you from the consequences of sin, the God who promises you a future for eternity, think seriously about these things & act accordingly.

The steeple seems fine although the kitchen less so. You gave fine words upon emancipation, as did His Grace, but the wisdom of quiet, personal reflection and hobby precludes. Not all dyke's are the same - I reckon lezzers can do it for politics rather than affection but who the hell wants to look at a naked bloke?

Sorry Your Grace, but for all the conspiracies about her being given the job for being a Scot/Leftie/Lesbian, the fact is that she got it for being a good poet.

I can't think of a poet worth his or her salt who led a life that would please the devout, and fewer still who didn't write poetry designed to infuriate the conservative mind. I can't think of a single poet whom I would trust with a policy job in government. But that's not what poet laureate is for - the job goes to the best British poet available.

In the absence of Tony Harrison, I would accept that Carol Ann Duffy is probably one of our best living poets, and a significant improvement on Andrew Motion. Her sexuality, politics and nationality are (in this case) irrelevant.

The appointment of this woman symbolises everything there is to symbolise about this administration. It's a political appointment to a non-political job, an ideological assault on what should be a non-ideological space, and, of course, an attempt to impose an agenda on the British people, rather than reflect their will.

A socialist, homosexual, feminist, politically active, crypto-republican Scottish woman, installed as poet laureate. Who on earth does she speak to? Who can she possibly speak for?

I await the tender, warm, patriotic, human, funny, Christian verse of the kind that Betjeman served us so loyally with with 'bated breath.

15 months after the complaint was filed, the CI is still awaiting a ruling from the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Meanwhile the complainant has had all his legal fees paid for by the taxpayer.Ah Canada. As Ezra Levant has pointed out - even if you win, you lose.

I've read some of Duffy's work and it's nothing to write home about. I've seen better written by amateurs and published on the web. There are more talented poets around but then, we are dealing with the people who appointed the dire Motion. Talent has absolutely nothing to do with the appointment. Former Laureates like Hughes and Betjeman must be spinning in their graves. Or laughing their socks off...

Yes. We're dealing with the people who pay the publishers and the politicians to promote the stuff with which they are determined to replace our true literary heritage. And that heritage is at least as great as anybody's. Many of us think it's aeons ahead of the others.

However, the not-a-bit-new gubbins is supposed to be powerful because it's limited to communism - and feminism, and S&V-ism, and political correctism, euSSR multicultism, and ....

Well - if someone can explain to me why that's laureate level poetry, I'd be glad to learn. I'm proud to be the world's number one dunce and philistine when it comes to what the moderns think is poetry. Certainly, I've no idea what this one's about, myself; but suspect there's something unpleasant in the woodshed. And, pace Stella Gibbons, I'm very glad it can't see me.

As to prayer - at our church we have a wonderful spiritual director who encourages us, in little groups or classes, to write our own prayers. I found it difficult, at first, having always relied on the set prayers, especially the Pater Noster. But I joined in, much to my own enlightenment; and I also believe that some of the efforts people produce are quite beautiful.

I seem to recall that Ted Hughes was a serial adulterer, while JohnBetjeman was said to have had 'exotic' experiences at university. I have several of their books of poetry and enjoy many of them.

I haven't read any of Duffy's poetry, although I did hear the one quoted above on the radio last week. I've heard better, but also worse.

The New Testament as far as I can see does not distinguish much, if at all, between heterosexual adultery and homosexual acts. The term 'sodomy' should in my view be avoided, since as we read in Ezekiel ch 16 vs 48-49 the sin of Sodom was pride, surfeit of food and prosperous ease while doing nothing to aid the poor and needy. So let Christians be careful not to selectively condemn sins we are not personally tempted to. One finger pointing, three pointing back.

The only answer to poetry with a secular humanist agenda is for Christian poets to come forward and write effectively. There is much to be written.

"The term 'sodomy' should in my view be avoided, since as we read in Ezekiel ch 16 vs 48-49 the sin of Sodom was pride, surfeit of food and prosperous ease while doing nothing to aid the poor and needy."

However, we then read in Ezekiel ch 16 v 50 that they were haughty and committed "abomination" before the Lord. Genesis ch 19 v 5 is where the association between Sodom and homosexuality came from.

Of course, the real sin of the Sodomites was that they refused to walk in the ways of the Lord and followed their own ways. All their other sins were a consequence of that. I think this is what the "pride" in Ezekiel refers to.

I fully agree with your points about selective condemnation (and the need for Christian poets). If the Church had condemned adultery consistently and effectively, giving a coherent and convincing explanation why it is wrong, and behaved as though it believed it, it would be in a much stronger position today.

I found an article linked from it, Evaluating Benedict, in which four Roman Catholic commentators give their opinions on the Pope's first four years. The following observation appears in "Have your say":

"So Stephen Wall was an advisor to Cardinal Cormac Murphy? Now I understand a great deal that puzzled me before."

Thanks James, of course you are right. I did however want to compare and contrast criticism of a lesbian laureate's sexual activities with the equally unbiblical practices of male heterosexual former laureates (well, Hughes anyway).

Billy Graham said that if God was to refrain from judging Europe and the USA, He would have to apologise to Sodom and Gommorrah, and not just re sexual sins but the 'pride, surfeit of food and prosperous ease while not helping the poor and needy' issues.

Since none of the pundits who pronounce on the 'goodness' or 'badness' of poetry will explain the basis of their judgements, I analysed this poem for myself. Perhaps they'll now jump all over me to say why I'm wrong and they're right!!! :))

My next post represents only a first run through 'Prayer,' of course: it's what I call a 'Response.' And it certainly remains for the the experts to contextualise the piece, relate it to Duffy's life, or their own lives; or to focus it according to their philosophies; or what they will. I shan't be returning to it, however.

I will, though, return to Old and Middle English, and the likes of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Tennyson, or Betjeman; and to prose writers like Austen, the Brontes, Dickens, and several other Victorians. Their work has life, substance, and interest.

I don't have to do better than Duffy, Theresa, in order to appreciate writers. In fact, I decided not to be a writer some years ago - not because I couldn't, but because I didn't want to. I especially didn't want to in light of present-day tastes.

Rhythm: confirms the above perception, disrupting the flow where enjambement leads sentences to end mid-line as caesuras.

Comment ---- So it's about fragmentation, disruption and concomitant Misery.

Structure: echoes that dynamic - three stanzas depict three separate states, respectively: female (day), male (night), and child (dusk/half-light; appears at half-stanza, also). Fourth is a half-stanza - a fragmented voice in the darkness, speaking the mechanical routine of the weather report (What the report actually is ... reader decide).

Tropes:Antithesis or paradox at Stanza 1: People pray; orisons don't. Comment ----Reference to the innate belief of the unbeliever?Paradox also at Stanza 2: the faithless have truth in their hearts, and it hurts (but not much). Comment---Use of 'faithless' in light of inability to pray reinforces ambiguity of both 'faith' and 'truth.'

Imagery: Sieve-hands; why? Comment----Very unclear. Maybe about tears - but separating what out of them? Money? Cookery? Is it traditional imagery of purification or God's Judgement? - for the prayerless? Salt to wash her face with? Reader, do-it-yourself!

Repetition: Comment---Constant - and works in contradistinction to the broken rhythm of the poem itself; thus sets up tension and coldness.It's very impersonal (anonymous) and mechanical throughout- :from 'minims' to scales, the train sounds and chanting, the mechanical routine of the Weather Report, and maybe even memorized prayers.

'Pray for us now' {=Ora pro nobis [peccadoribus]}- Possible interpretations----invoking BVM?- Ave Maria... a virga (branch) of the tree? A mechanical prayer? To a Tree Goddess? Presumably the piano scales echo some sort of memory for Misery (or Duffy?) - because they are irritating, boring, and unimaginatively repetitive to some people! The 'nameless' 'named' child is an object - and invokes sympathy for the losing parent rather than the little one lost (Ah, Blake - I left you off my list!!!). Still, the antithesis of 'someone/they-their' might suggest that both parents and child have lost something.

So, you see, all my hard work suggests that, on a simple level, the poem probably is about the break-up of a marriage and family. That's why he and she are off in their own worlds, and the child is out in the cold.

So I say Duffy knows about mechanics in poetry. And she has a message that may relate to her personal experience and anger (given the bio from Theresa). But she makes the reader work too hard for too little return.

I think it must be a very small section of society who even understands what poetry is about (and the purpose of it)A bit like latin I suppose.If you want to communicate something why not just say it in a language everyone understands?

My favourite poet is Charles Causely, sadly no longer with us but he wrote poems that everyone could relate to.

Eden Rock

They are waiting for me somewhere beyond Eden Rock:My father, twenty-five, in the same suitOf Genuine Irish Tweed, his terrier JackStill two years old and trembling at his feet.

My mother, twenty-three, in a sprigged dressDrawn at the waist, ribbon in her straw hat,Has spread the stiff white cloth over the grass.Her hair, the colour of wheat, takes on the light.

She pours tea from a Thermos, the milk straightFrom an old H.P. sauce-bottle, a screwOf paper for a cork; slowly sets outThe same three plates, the tin cups painted blue.

The sky whitens as if lit by three suns.My mother shades her eyes and looks my wayOver the drifted stream. My father spinsA stone along the water. Leisurely,They beckon to me from the other bank.I hear them call, 'See where the stream-path is!Crossing is not as hard as you might think.'

It reminds me of some of my own profound memories. It serves as a reminder to me about taking kids at face value and saying devastatingly superficial things to them when they could be in there molding the fabric of the universe itself.

However as I have and I can't put the genie back in the bottle, let me answer Esrswhile Literary Person;

The poem is a sonnet. Look at the rhyme.

Sieve hands- a sieve is a round container with holes. Cupped hands on your face could therefore be described as a sieve.

Latin chanting; when I was at school we had to chant as follows; 'amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant'. It has a wee rhythm rather like wheels going round.

The theme of the poem? It's about moments of grace. Those moments when you're thinking of nothing and God touches you. Do you not see it? That's why I'm so reluctant to critisise Carol Ann Duffy; there is something she understands of God. He often chooses to write straight with crooked lines and much as I would be censorious of Duffy's lifestyle, there is something of God in this poem. That's why I put it here.

McKenzie- that was a very good effort. Keep going.

Right, now that I've raised the gale I think I will hasten to harbour..

Theresa - But thank you for posting the poem and livening up the strand! You gave our discussion substance, too.

I also appreciate your comments on the sonnet (indeed it is). My response moved too quickly onto function rather than form. But the relationship between the two signifies, and I still read the final couplet as something technically confining ('correct') -but simultaneously fractured.

These things rattle about in my head: and so I also wonder about 'Finisterre' (Latin: Finis Terrae) and thus about the relationship between 'Mid-lands and Land's End (or ?End of the Earth).

Actually, I notice that Duffy's Dogger Bank and Rockall are sites of some contention, even Battles. Maybe Malin too, I don't know - but those weather stations are off the coasts of E. Britain/England, W. Scotland, and Ireland. And Finisterre? -well - off the west coast (pre-2002, it's now Fitzroy).

Yes, I can see God at work there: that's where my faith/truth and innate belief of the unbeliever come in. Now I even have a glint of Final Things!

Yes, too, I like your perception of 'moments of grace' - such is the 'gift' from the tree - but as to the cause of their striking... she leaves it to us, doesn't she?

For interpretations like that, I enjoyed the contributions from McKenzie and the others -.

Perhaps Duffy's obscurity and ambiguity are calculated to elicit such freedom of response ... But I still value poets who have, in addition, something clearer to say.

I like poetry and Duffy's looks OK. I enjoyed the homely, close-to-experience feel of that poem and look forward to reading more of her work. It doesn't have to be the best or most complex poetry in the world, as long as enough people can respond to it; and it sounds as if she's interested in teaching more openness to the poetry present but not always noticed in everyday language and life. That makes her a true heir of the once-famous Bards of Britain!

I even agree with her about Sun headlines (which doesn't mean I like the news copy). But for those who love the artistry of words, satire, and of course puns, headlines have it all in delicious morsels; and the Sun has dished up the very best for decades. For instance, on Michael Jackson arriving late and in disarray at his trial: "Bananas in Pyjamas". Or, "How do you solve a problem like Korea?". On George Michael's arrest in the US: "Zip me up before you go go!" And so on. Maybe other commenters would like to share their favourite headline moments (judging by the political climate of this Blog, Sun readers should be plentiful here).

I read recently that Andrew Motion had enough of being Poet Laureate - it's not much fun writing poetry to order, apparently. Seems likely that quite a few professional poets might turn down the honour rather than compromise their artistic output with raps for Prince William's birthday, etc. So perhaps we should just be grateful that someone interesting has agreed to take the post, and leave it to the Press to roast her if she can't do the job.

I think a lot of people have just missed the point that she is a terrible poet. Sorry, Sally D, but she is. There's nothing very inventive about any of her poetry, and nothing particularly interesting either. Her metaphors are bland, and her failure to use rhyming structures and suchlike lost its originality decades ago. The vast majority of her poems are just attacks of men. Not "patriarchal society", or "chauvinism", just men as a gender.

She's just another one of the rollcall of angry left-wing poets writing tiresome polemnics. Unoriginal, not particularly talented, and boring.

Carol Ann Duffy is amazing. Great! With the choice of Carol Ann Duffy, the post held by such poets as Dryden, Tennyson, Wordsworth and Ted Hughes went to a woman for the first time. Congratulations! I have noticed smpugh, that you have not congratulated either Her Majesty or Duffy on this Yes I did - see second in thread. thank you for sharing your post.

About His Grace:

Archbishop Cranmer takes as his inspiration the words of Sir Humphrey Appleby: ‘It’s interesting,’ he observes, ‘that nowadays politicians want to talk about moral issues, and bishops want to talk politics.’ It is the fusion of the two in public life, and the necessity for a wider understanding of their complex symbiosis, which leads His Grace to write on these very sensitive issues.

Cranmer's Law:

"It hath been found by experience that no matter how decent, intelligent or thoughtful the reasoning of a conservative may be, as an argument with a liberal is advanced, the probability of being accused of ‘bigotry’, ‘hatred’ or ‘intolerance’ approaches 1 (100%).”

Follow His Grace on

The cost of His Grace's conviction:

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